Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A small rill.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A little rill; a brook; a rivulet.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun A little rill.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun A little rill.

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

rill ("small stream”, “brook”, “rivulet") + either -et or -let

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Examples

  • But any reader might be pardoned for not at once divining that the double rillet of minstrelsy, on page 37, was the Troubadour and the Trouvere, nor for refusing to read pages 155 and 156 without a tolerable outfit of information upon the historical points and personages there catalogued.

    The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 79, May, 1864 Various

  • As a rillet among the sedge are thy hands upon me; 20

    Dance Figure 1917

  • The wide river of a world's life, to which the rillet of her own small existence had been carelessly winding, was all at once clearly in sight.

    Gideon's Band A Tale of the Mississippi George Washington Cable 1884

  • Ramsey clutched the old man's arm, pressed curls and brow against it, and laughed in a rillet of pure silver.

    Gideon's Band A Tale of the Mississippi George Washington Cable 1884

  • As the sun rose, Sweetheart and her sailor glided through a gap in the sand reef that closed the lagoon in, luffed, and as a great cloud of nesting pelicans rose from their dirty town on the flats, ran softly upon the inner sands, where a rillet, a mere thread of sweet water, trickled across the white beach.

    Strong Hearts George Washington Cable 1884

  • A single tent stood in a gully running from one of the gravel-pits of the heath, near an iron-red rillet, and a girl of Kiomi's tribe leaned over the lazy water at half length, striking it with her handkerchief.

    The Adventures of Harry Richmond — Complete George Meredith 1868

  • Then was heard such a rillet of dialogue without scandal or politics, as nowhere else in Britain; all vowed it subsequently; for to the remembrance it seemed magical.

    Diana of the Crossways — Complete George Meredith 1868

  • Then was heard such a rillet of dialogue without scandal or politics, as nowhere else in Britain; all vowed it subsequently; for to the remembrance it seemed magical.

    Complete Project Gutenberg Works of George Meredith George Meredith 1868

  • Behold the mountain rillet, become a brook, become a torrent, how it inarms a handsome boulder: yet if the stone will not go with it, on it hurries, pursuing self in extension, down to where perchance a dam has been raised of a sufficient depth to enfold and keep it from inordinate restlessness.

    The Egoist George Meredith 1868

  • By that secret the mystery of the organ is legible: and a comparison of the heart to the mountain rillet is taken up to show us the unbaffled force of the little channel in seeking to swell its volume, strenuously, sinuously, ever in pursuit of self; the busiest as it is the most single-aiming of forces on our earth.

    The Egoist George Meredith 1868

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